The San Diego Padres Must Lower Their Ticket Prices

The San Diego Padres have one of the most uninteresting rosters in major league baseball right now. They must lower their current ticket prices in order to entice fans into supporting their club at the ballpark. Those are simple facts.

While several teams throughout the league are offering different unique ticket packages and discounts as the season winds down, the Padres have no tickets available in the near future for under $15 dollars a seat. A $15 dollar ticket isn’t all that bad, until you compare that to what other teams are offering.

The San Francisco Giants and the Colorado Rockies, for example, have tickets available for as little as three or four dollars for the last few series’ of the year. Astounding, considering the Rockies are fighting for their lives to hold on to the second wild card spot. In June, a few teams announced the release of ticket packages that were usable for a month’s worth of games.

Padres’ management, however, had a unique take on this monthly proposition. For $99 dollars, fans could purchase a package that gave them tickets to every home game until the team won its fifth game of June. This was laughable compared to the other cheaper, less complicated deals that rival organizations were offering.

Essentially, to get the most value, you were rooting for your team to lose.

The San Diego Padres have recently become the only professional sports team in the city. Many casual sports fans and former NFL diehards will be looking for another outlet to turn their attention towards in the month of September.

The Padres should be focusing on making it as easy as possible for those scorned football fans to make the transition to becoming fans of their own ball club.

It should be known to all of San Diego that Petco Park was just named the best ballpark in America by USA Today. Considering the drive some San Diegans have to make to get downtown (as well as the price of parking and the price of a ticket), Padres management should be making it as easy as possible for people to attend a game in person. Empty seats generate zero income for the franchise.

Odds are, once a casual fan attends a game for the first time, they’ll be so wowed by the ballpark, they’ll want to come back. Market the team around the city, its heritage, the future of the franchise, and how affordable tickets are to finish out the season,and more people will want to see the team before the season ends. An easy plan to accomplish if you put some effort into it.

Most San Diegans would struggle to name just a handful of current Padre players. This is a byproduct of these players being ignored in most media outlets and by promotional material itself. The more these players are marketed and promoted locally, the more people will want to support them.

Most every professional athlete in San Diego has a social media account. However, they have yet to use it to attract more fans to the team.

So, if the Padres organization refuses to market their players, then they should market the ballpark. What needs to come first, however, is the simple lowering of ticket prices. The Padres are currently an unimpressive 19th in attendance this year, but considering the performance on the field, things could be worse. It’s hard to imagine they are hemorrhaging large amounts of money, and if they’re not, this should be an easy decision. Do what is right for the citizens of America’s Finest City.